The Male Brain (14 page)

Because facial muscles are controlled by the brain's emotional circuits, scientists have been able to learn about emotions by measuring these muscles. Researchers in one study placed electrodes on men's and women's smiling muscle--the zygomaticus--and on the anger/ scowling muscle--the corrugator. They recorded the muscles' electrical activity as the men and women viewed emotionally provocative photos. Much to the scientists' surprise, the men, after seeing an emotional face for just one fifth of a second--so briefly that it was still unconscious--were more
emotionally reactive than the women
. But it's what happened to the men's facial muscles next that helped me explain Neil's guy face to Danielle.

As the experiment proceeded, at 2.5 seconds, well into the range of conscious processing, the men's facial muscles became
less
emotionally responsive than the women's. The researchers concluded that the men consciously--or at least semiconsciously--suppressed showing their emotions on their faces. Meanwhile, the women's facial muscles became responsive after 2.5 seconds. researchers, this suggests that themselves, perhaps since childhood, to automatically turn off or disguise facial emotions. The females' expressions not only continued to mirror the emotion they were seeing on the face in the photo, but they automatically exaggerated it, from a grin to a big smile or from a
subtle frown to a pout
. They, too, had been practicing this since childhood.
more
emotionally

According to the men have trained

Men's poker faces are one reason women tend to think they are "emotionally challenged." But as this study showed, it becomes automatic for men to keep their feelings to themselves.

THE HORMONES OF EMOTION

Because men use their TPJ more, they can't fathom why women want to spend so much time talking about their emotions and often getting more and more upset. I told Neil and Danielle that I once asked my scientist husband, "Why do men respond to emotional issues
with logic instead of feelings?"
He laughed and said, "The real question is why women don't."
Neil laughed too and said, "Now all I need to know is how to get Danielle to use her TPJ more."

What Neil and Danielle didn't know was that through hundreds of thousands of years, our male and female brain circuits have been fine-tuned
to run on different hormones
. In fact, our sex hormones might be partially responsible
for our different emotional styles
. Male circuits use more testosterone and vasopressin; female circuits use more estrogen and oxytocin. These hormones run certain brain areas--like the amygdala, hypothalamus, and even perhaps the MNS and TPJ--
differently in men and women
.

Scientists have been testing how men's and women's brains react when they're given the other sex's hormones. Researchers found that when men were given a single high dose of oxytocin (a hormone that females make more of), it increased their ability to resonate with other people's feelings. So when the men looked at photos of faces displaying subtle emotional cues, they read them more accurately. The scientists concluded that the
men became temporarily more empathetic
. In a separate study, researchers gave women a single high dose of testosterone and found that it temporarily
made them more mentally focused
.

What Danielle criticized as Neil's "unsupportive, unemotional robotic mode" was actually the result of his finely tuned TPJ, enhanced by his high testosterone. Because this state of mind is the male brain's daily reality, it's hard for men to believe that women don't see the world the same way as they do. But we don't.

Danielle turned to Neil and, only half jokingly, said, "Well, I wouldn't mind using my TPJ more as long as it doesn't give me a male ego!"

THE MALE EGO

Joe, a forty-five-year-old manager at a local car dealership, called me in great distress, saying his wife, Maria, my former patient, was going to leave him if he didn't come see me about his anger. He explained that she was furious with him for getting into a shouting match with a cab driver. "I'm not saying I'm proud of getting into it with him," he told me, "but I don't think it was such a big deal. The guy asked for it."

And for Joe, it wasn't a big deal. A man's brain area for suppressing anger, the septum, is smaller than it is in the female brain, so expressing anger is a more common response for men
than it is for women
. The anger-aggression circuits in the male brain are formed before he's born and get behaviorally reinforced during boyhood and
hormonally reinforced during the teen years
. And by adulthood, using these hormonally influenced circuits for social risk-taking and aggression have become a
familiar part of his life
. Men in their forties, like Joe, still have a lot of testosterone and vasopressin fueling their brain circuits, often giving them a hair trigger for anger. Studies have found that though men and women report that they
feel
anger for an equal number of minutes per day, men get physically aggressive
twenty times more often than women do
.

I'd barely greeted Joe and Maria in the waiting room when he affably launched into an explanation: "I want you to know that I've been working hard to keep my cool and be more sensitive to Maria, but sometimes I slip up."

Maria said, "That was more than a slip! I thought any second they'd start punching each other. Tell me, what would make a forty-five-year-old man act like that?"

I looked at Joe and asked, "Well, what
did
happen?"

 

He folded his arms across his chest as he said, "It was nothing. She just gets upset."

But if we could have watched Joe's brain circuits while they were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic behind the cab that was braking at every green light, we'd have seen Joe's anger-aggression circuits responding to his rising hormonal tide. As his frustration grew, we'd see his testosterone and stress hormone, cortisol, activating his amygdala and
firing up his fighting circuits
. When Joe flashed his lights at the taxi to speed up and the driver hit his brakes instead, we'd have seen Joe's motor cortex activate the muscles in his hands and arms as he banged on the steering wheel and blasted the horn. When the cab driver retaliated by slowing down more and braking erratically, we'd have seen Joe's brain being flooded with a mixture of adrenaline, cortisol, and testosterone. We'd have seen his "good judgment" circuits, the frontal lobes, go dark and offline as his right foot pressed down on the gas pedal to bumper-tap the cab--hard enough to splash Maria's coffee all over her dress.

As the cabbie slammed on his brakes and jumped out of his cab, we'd have seen Joe laser-focusing every cell in his brain
and body for a fight
. When Maria yelled, "Stop, Joe! What if he has a gun?" Joe's auditory system barely heard her. He'd already thrust open his door and was hurling his bulky frame out of the car.

Now, sitting in front of me, Joe looked as though he'd been sent to the principal's office for fighting on the playground. He knew he was in serious trouble with Maria, but he still thought she was overreacting. As for Maria, the encounter with the cab driver would be the straw that broke the camel's back. Looking down, she shook her head and said to me, "Someday his stupid male ego is going to get him killed."

Most men aren't proud of their knee-jerk reaction to being challenged, but as Joe put it, "It's just a guy thing."

I explained that Joe's male brain biologically saw the cab driver's actions as a challenge to his territory and dominance, and his brain responded with a series of chemical
changes prompting his aggressive behavior
. Looking at Maria, I said, "This brain biology doesn't give men permission to be uncivilized, but it does provide insight into why they defend their manhood so vigorously."

Addressing both of them, I said, "Basically, the hormone cocktail in the male brain is the underpinning of Joe's anger and aggression."

Joe unfolded his arms and leaned forward, saying, "I guess this hormone cocktail does get me in trouble, at least with Maria."

Smugly, I thought to myself, "We've made some good progress in our very first session." Boy, was I wrong.
AUTOCATALYTIC ANGER

Joe and Maria had been married twenty-two years, and from Joe's perspective, they had had a good marriage. Up until now, when she threatened divorce, he was on top of the world. They had a nice house, and even during the latest recession, he was the biggest earner at the dealership where he worked.

Although Maria was proud of Joe's success at work, she didn't agree with his opinion of their marriage. She had a mental tally sheet for every fight they'd ever had. Studies have found that men and women remember facts equally well, but women remember the details of
emotional events better and longer
. The brain has two independent memory systems. One is memory for unemotional objects or events, and the other is
for memory enhanced by emotion
. In emotional situations these two systems interact in important ways. Essentially, men remember facts and figures, but women record not only the facts, but also
every detail of
the emotion that they're feeling
. So when Maria recalled a fight with Joe, she'd not only remember the facts, but she'd reexperience her sadness, anger, and fear all over again.

She said, "It doesn't take much to set him off. I walk around on eggshells waiting for him to blow. And then he follows me around the house from room to room shouting at me and getting more worked up."

Maria was describing a behavior that scientists call
autocatalytic
, or self-reinforcing, anger. Once some men's anger ignites, it's hard to stop. Their anger gets fueled by testosterone, vasopressin, and cortisol. These hormones reduce a man's physical fear of the opponent
and activate his territorial fight reaction
. When Maria yells back at Joe, his brain knows she isn't a real threat to him, so her anger just gets him more fired up. His anger is feeding on her anger and then back on his own. Scientists have found that when anger reaches the boiling point in some men, under conditions of high testosterone, it can produce pleasure, egging them on and making
their anger harder to control
. Joe couldn't admit it to me, because he almost didn't know it himself, but part of his brain was enjoying being angry and seeing her angry. He was getting a high from his anger.
This high was what Joe had been using for decades to win competitions. He knew from playing high-school football that getting
angry got him fired up
. And he now used that energy to help him win the sales contests at work. When men like Joe are in a competitive mood or looking for a fight, seeing their opponent get angry creates a strange sort of excitement. The intelligent part of the brain, our cortex, has learned to harness deep, primitive emotions--like anger--to our advantage.

According to studies, people prefer to feel emotions that are potentially useful, even
if those feelings are unpleasant
. Researchers showed that even though anger can cause flawed thinking by reducing the perceptions of risk and triggering aggression, anger can sometimes make
us think more clearly
. They concluded that anger prompts more careful and rational analysis of another person's reasoning, so in some instances, anger can make
people
more
rational, not less
. But while Joe's anger was paying off at work, Maria made it clear that it wasn't scoring any points at home.

She quietly said, "Joe, when you get mad, it always gets worse, and it really, really scares me."

At this Joe whistled through his teeth and raised his eyebrows. "But you know I'd never hurt you," he said, looking stricken. In cultures all over the world, men like Joe consider it perfectly
acceptable to express their anger
, especially when they feel they're being challenged. So men are often surprised to hear that their wives and children are actually afraid of them. Researchers have also found that high-testosterone men, like Joe, more than low-testosterone men, have a need to dominate others, and so they react
more dramatically to being challenged
. And this happens in the animal kingdom too. Studies in primates show that dominant males whose status is consistently challenged maintain higher levels of testosterone and are
more aggressive than subordinate males
. The higher the testosterone, the more invigorated and battle-ready the male brain feels.

When Maria glared at Joe or shouted back at him, she was unknowingly challenging his
dominance, thus increasing his testosterone
. She was causing the flames of Joe's anger to flare up, escalating and prolonging the fight.

"Okay, if that's how it works, I'll agree to stop glaring back," Maria said. "But he has to promise to walk away before he gets so mad that he can't shut up."

I looked questioningly at Joe, and he nodded. "All right. I'll try," he said. "But I just don't get why she's so upset about this all of a sudden. I've been like this my whole life!"

As it turned out, when Maria and Joe first started dating, she was flattered by his jealous, intense way of letting her know she was the one. She said she liked the way he aggressively stared down other guys he caught checking her out. In those days, Joe's tough-guy attitude made him more attractive to her.

Research shows that angry men get noticed more--not only
by other men but also by women
. Ironically, it was the same high-testosterone personality traits that had initially attracted Maria to Joe that were now driving them apart.

"But it isn't hopeless," I said. "The good news is that research shows that couples who argue have a better chance of staying together. The fighting you've been doing, while damaging in its own way, gives your marriage a better chance of survival than if
you suppressed your anger altogether
." It was clear to me that Joe and Maria still loved each other. I just needed to help them work on expressing their anger in less destructive ways. But Joe would still need his aggression to motivate him and maintain his place in the pecking order at work, as my patient Neil was finding out firsthand.